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DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/gyZ99iXA

Introduction

Peer reviewers are asked to contribute intellectual work to assess and improve scholarly publications. As with all work, the quality and characteristics of peer reviews vary. Editors responsibilities include support not only to the peer reviewers who typically volunteer the time and knowledge but also to the authors, who reasonably should expect non-conflicted, thoughtful, unbiased, thorough reviews of the work in question and to not be subjected to hostile or personal attacks.

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Cite this as: COPE Council. Editing of reviewer comments - Survey results — English. https://doi.org/10.24318/gyZ99iXA Version 1: June 2020.

©2020 Committee on Publication Ethics (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Full page history

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.4.1

In early 2019 COPE, with the support of Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group), commissioned primary research with Shift Learning to better understand the publication ethics landscape for editors working on journals within the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

About this resource

Author Developed by COPE Council with support from Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group) and Shift Learning
Version 1 August 2019
How to cite this
Exploring publication ethics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences: A COPE study 2019 https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.4.1 

Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Non-commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works —
You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. We ask that you give full accreditation to COPE with a link to our website: publicationethics.org

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  • 26 February 2020

    Update to the pdf re: subject areas included in the broad categories, and a category name. Changes as follows:
    Page 26: the Humanities category should include the subject Media, Communication and Cultural Studies (currently under Information Sciences on page 27)
    On page 27: As above, the only subject in the category Information Sciences should now be Library and Information Sciences
    On page 31: the category called Libraries and Information Technology should be Information Sciences (the n 22 is correct).
    FI, the numbers are correct, just the category subjects/ and name need amending.

[PDF, 556Kb - click image to download]

The research paper will be published here, and a discussion document will be made available to open this to further discussion.

 

From 2008-2013 grant applications were approved by COPE to fund research. COPE no longer offers grants but commissions research as determined by its strategic aims.

[PDF, 100Kb - click image to download]

The COPE Code of Conduct states that editors have a responsibility to ensure the reliability of the scientific record, implying that it will sometimes be necessary to retract an article, but it has never attempted to develop detailed guidance about this. Anecdotal evidence suggests that editors may be reluctant to retract articles because of concerns about litigation or uncertainty about the correct procedures. We are therefore examining retractions to understand journals’ current practices and any difficulties faced by editors.

About this resource

Full page history

  • 27 August 2019

    Removed link to CoC

Although there is no universally agreed definition of authorship, authorship of research publications is a major requirement for academic advancement and a common cause of disputes among colleagues. Most research on authorship issues comes from biomedicine, where the authorship criteria are those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. In order to make informed guidelines on authorship and set directions for future research, it is important to analyze authorship requirements across different research fields, as well as the current state of research into authorship.

This is a collaborative project between Sara Schroter, Gary Bryan, Elizabeth Loder (BMJ); Jason Roberts (International Society of Managing and Technical Editors), Tim Houle (Wake Forest University, North Carolina), and Don Penzien (University of Mississippi, Jackson, MS).

Plagiarism is a growing issue in scientific publishing domain. Information technology has immensely increased the accessibility of source literature, simultaneously making plagiarism easier then ever, but it has also enabled the development of plagiarism detection software tools. In order to detect and prevent plagiarism, we designed a research project to investigate two issues: the prevalence of plagiarism and attitudes towards plagiarism in the scientific community.

The project aims to survey journals’ instructions to reviewers of submitted manuscripts. The study will summarise if and how journals use reporting guidelines in the peer review process, and will explore how effective the editors have found reporting guidelines in improving manuscript quality.

Most plagiarism cannot be judged solely by the similarities discovered when using CrossCheck. Based on experience of cross checking more than 2000 manuscripts from approximately 50 countries in different parts of the world per year, this project aims to provide 3-5 typical cases of cross checked plagiarism in three different disciplines covered by the Journal of Zhejjiang University-SCIENCE A/B/C (http://www.zju.edu.cn/jzus/) (JZUS-A: Applied Physics and Engineering; JZUS-B: Biomedicine and Biotechnology; JZUS-C: Computers and Electronics).

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